LEGAL INCIDENTS. II. COVERING UP CRIME. By J. W. Donovan. "' T 7HEN I was a young man," said W Ira Lee to the writer, "I had a lesson in covering up crime that nearly took my life, and has lasted me ever since; and as I look back on that dark and dreary winter night, it seems like a dream of Rider Haggard's, so full is it of terrible tragedy. "I had kept a little cross-roads store and sold a little cider to my customers for a long time, when one day an evil genius induced me to add beer to my little stock of merchan dise, and I bought a small barrel, and began to sell it in large glasses for a sixpence each. One dark cold night about nine a tall coarselooking stranger entered, and called a second time for beer, and grew boisterous, till finally a third glass was drunk, and he became drowsy and stupid. "He lived some three miles away, and the road was banked high with snow and dan gerous to one in his condition, and I realized it. Finding him almost asleep, and not de siring to turn him out to freeze, I concluded to make up a bed of buffalo robes in the cellar and let him rest till morning. "I had made his ' bunk ' and led him to the cellar-way all right, when he suddenly stumbled and fell head-first down the stair way, striking on his head on the cellar floor at the bottom, where he lay in a lifeless heap, bleeding terribly, with his head curled under him. "I hurriedly placed him upon the bed, and was about to apply some restoratives when the store-door opened, and I was forced to go up and meet a customer, who stayed and stayed till I thought he never would go, and finally left me. "Going once more to my man, who lay life less and silent, I began to realize the awful
risk I was running. Instead of calling in neighbors to explain it, I went right on to create testimony by digging a grave in the cellar for the victim, and when about two feet deep, I luckily struck water, and that ended the cellar burial. "The store was near Kenka Lake, and I had a good hand-sled, and determined to dump the body in the lake near the steam boat dock where it was not then frozen over. Loading the heavy body on the little sled, I started down a back street for the lake side, leaving a bloody trail all the way for detection. What a journey, what a feeling! How the stars brightened, and the window-curtains seemed to open; how the sled creaked on the frosty snow! How I looked at every corner; how I realized the awful crime of manslaugh ter! I shall never forget that agony. "Going down the last hill to the lake, the corpse slid off the sled, and I began to lift it on again. I had placed the body fairly on the runners; but the face hung downward, and in turning it over, wJiich was no easy task, I was startled by the sound, ' What are — you — doing — with — me?" Taking you home,' I gasped, as I almost fell prostrate from fright and joy and confusion. In a few minutes more he had revived, and I had cleared myself of a hanging by his coming to life again. "The motion in the air, the stupor, the limp condition of the body from drink, the roundabout way of covering up crime, saved me, and I may by this lesson save others, from a terrible fate." The man who told me this incident is liv ing, is married, well-to-do, and no one would dream of his early experience as he now truth fully and freely relates it.
